


IV. Stole You Away

by notablyindigo



Series: The Better Half [4]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 21:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1241128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notablyindigo/pseuds/notablyindigo





	IV. Stole You Away

The bedside light clicks on and there’s a shift of weight on the other side of the mattress. Even without opening her eyes, Joan knows what time it is. Still, she takes a peek at the clock, just to check. 3:57AM. Jerry’s up early this morning. 

She knew about his insomnia from being a student in his lab—midafternoon tiredness, emails in her inbox with inexplicably late timestamps, espresso triple shots with lunch—but experiencing it firsthand is a different thing entirely. He is conscientious, though, and does his best not to wake her (except for when he does, but then it’s for other reasons, which she doesn’t mind at all). 

Theirs was a strange relationship, she would be the first to admit, but she’d known as soon as she made the decision to stay in New York for medical school that it was only a matter of time. By her senior year of college, their interactions had taken on a kind of electric intensity that could only point to one thing (she’d actually come on to him first, attempting to seduce him in his office during the lab Christmas party. He’d taken her by the shoulders and pushed her away, gently. “You’re my student, Joan,” he’d said quietly. “We can’t.”). But by May, she wasn’t his student anymore, and one thing led very quickly to another.

Joan rolls over and watches Jerry as he quietly gets out of bed and wraps his robe around his body. He’s tall and thin with a prominent, hawkish nose (her mother once referred to him as “the storkman”, and Joan was so taken with it that it became his new nickname), and dark, close-cropped hair threaded through with silver. She’s the first to acknowledge that he is not a traditionally handsome man in the way of Hollywood, not with his craggy skin or the perpetual dark circles under his eyes, but he is beautiful to her in a way that she finds difficult to describe. It’s his strong hands, his slow, sure smile, the way he quirks his mouth when he’s deep in thought. 

What she loves about him most, though,—what she loved about him first—is his brilliance: the way he takes concepts beyond their apparent conclusions and spins them into complex webs of thought, how his mind races so far ahead of his mouth that he’s often at a loss for words. Sometimes, over dinner, she likes to float a topic that she know will get him going, and then just listen to him talk, let his knowledge wash over her. Joan knows how smart she is (4.0 from Columbia, 41 on the MCAT; she’d had her pick of med schools, had deans of admission sending her hand-written letters of entreaty), but Jerry is another kind of intelligence altogether—intuitive, effortless (years later, she will recognize this in another man with whom she shares a home). 

Still, what made the biggest impression when she was his student—what makes the biggest impression now as his…whatever they are—is his assumption of genius in others, in her. 

Secretly, what she loves even more than Jerry’s brilliance is the way it sets her mind alight.

He comes around to her side of the bed, leans over her and brushes his lips against her cheek. “Good morning,” he murmurs.

"Come back to bed," she replies, tugging him closer by his collar, and then adds with a sly smile, "I’ll make it worth your while."

(It doesn’t hurt that he knows how to set her body alight, too.)

\- - -

"You were romantically involved with your genetics instructor!" Sherlock accuses. She can’t tell if he’s scolding or impressed.

\- - -

Joan sits down at the table on the cafe’s front porch, and almost immediately the rapid-fire texts from Sherlock begin. She’d left him a note at the brownstone letting him know she’d be back by dinner, but apparently that wasn’t enough information. She glances at her phone to read the latest message, and smiles in spite of herself at his indecipherable text shorthand.

"So who’s the guy?" Emily looks at Joan meaningfully as she stirs her coffee, and Joan rolls her eyes.

"It’s not like that," she says. "He’s a…friend, I guess." Emily looks at her skeptically. 

"Fine, whatever. What’s this ‘friend’ like?" She gestures at Joan’s phone, which was buzzing with each incoming text. "I mean, he’s clearly into you, crazy, or both." Joan pauses, and takes a long sip of her tea to buy time.

"He’s…he’s extremely intelligent," she says at last, and Emily nods knowingly.

"Well, you did always go for men too smart for their own good," she says, settling back in her chair. "Please at least tell me the age gap is narrower this time? I worry about guys having the stamina to keep up with you."

Joan shrugs noncommittally. “For what it’s worth,” she says, trying to suppress a grin, “stamina was never Jerry’s problem.”


End file.
